Intel Bean Canyon NUC

Stuart Burns discovers that power and performance are well within your reach in the smallest of Intel’s build-your-own NUC systems.

- Stuart Burns

The NUCs (Next Unit of Computing) from Intel will appeal to a certain demographic who like their computers to be small, quiet and powerful. No huge (and very dull) beige boxes with huge amounts of noisy fans in sight.

The Bean Canyon range of NUC is the latest iteration of Intel’s innovative form factor. What’s especially nice about these NUC box sets (as opposed to pre-populated NUCs) is that it equates to “build your own NUC to your own spec” when it comes to RAM and hard disk. (These SKUs also don’t come with any OS licence either, which make them ideal for Linux.) The evaluation unit was maxed it out with 32GB RAM and a half-terabyte NVMe M.2 hard disk drive in place. The process of “building” the NUC took less than 10 minutes. Indeed, it took longer to find the appropriate sized screwdriver than to install the components. This makes a nice change from most upgrade scenarios.

Choose wisely